And rates for some individual health plans in Washington increased by up to 40 percent until Washington State imposed stiffer premium regulations.

The report finds that "[w]hile rising health care costs is a known problem with our broken health care system, some of the premium increases requested by insurance companies are 5 to 10 times larger than the growth rate in national health expenditures."

It also seizes on an issue the administration has been pushing in recent weeks, saying that while prices went up, so did profits and CEO pay.

"[P]rofits for the ten largest insurance companies increased 250 percent between 2000 and 2009, ten times faster than inflation," the report finds.

More from the report:

Last year, as working families struggled with rising health care costs and a recession, the five largest health insurance companies - WellPoint, UnitedHealth Group, Cigna, Aetna, and Humana - took in combined profits of $12.2 billion, up 56 percent over 2008.

These health insurance companies' profits grew even as nominal GDP decreased by 1 percent over this same time period.

And recent data show that the CEOs of America's five largest insurers were each compensated up to $24 million in 2008.

The report lays out the case for reform and specifically how the bills passed by the House and Senate would demand transparency from insurers so they would need to account for administrative costs and profits as well as justify premium increases.

The Anthem hikes also have allowed Democrats and the administration to start up again with the drumbeat for a plan that includes competition.

Meanwhile, health care reform activists in New York are planning a march across the Brooklyn Bridge Saturday that would culminate in a rally outside of Anthem's headquarters at Broadway and Liberty streets.

"Americans across the country are uniting to send a message to Washington: forget the special interests and get the job done," the group wrote in a planning email.